Monday, December 31, 2012

Will
2013 be the Year of Branded Content?

Economic optimism even as we
fall over the cliff

According to a
new survey by the Custom Content
Council and ContentWise, brand content (aka
brand journalism, sponsored editorial or thought leadership content) is getting
a bigger slice of the marketing pie: a 13 percent increase, or $1,640,107 in
spending for the last two years. As more organizations jump onto the content
marketing bandwagon, let’s hope the standards don’t slip.

Top Four Reasons for Using Branded Content

Respondents’ primary reasons for using branded content are: (1) educating
customers, (2) boosting brand loyalty, (3) up-selling and (4) retaining customers.
Again, No.3 won’t work in a vacuum—you can’t simply upsell when you need a sales
boost; you need to work the up-sell efforts in smartly while you’re educating,
engaging and retaining your customers all year long on a consistent and non-intrusive
basis. Need for Outsourcing

Four out of five marketers (79%) say their companies are moving into branded
content either at a moderate or aggressive pace, but they can’t do it alone. More
than half of respondents (52%) say they outsourced some portion of at least one
type of branded content creation in 2012. Researchers say more outsourcing
dollars than ever are being spent on external agencies such as custom
publishers, PR/social media firms, design firms, ad agencies, and interactive
agencies handling aspects of branded content. More than half of brands (56%) now
outsource, and of those, the average annual spend is $987,417, an increase of
46.6 percent from a year ago.

Importance of integration

According
to researchers, three in four brands build content for print and repurpose that
content for social media and the brand’s parent website. The multi-channel
nature of content marketing is driving an average brand to investment over $1.7
million annually, up 5.1 percent increase from a year ago.

Our Take: As more and more B2B marketers search for ways to cut through
the clutter and bypass banner blindness, the need for high value content will reach
a new level. Fortunately, most journalists, analysts, researchers and academics
we know will resist the temptation to sell out to the highest bidder for the
services. A few organizations will look to save a few bucks by aggregating,
scraping and video clipping whatever they can get their hands on in the public
domain—or turn to low-cost vendors who provide those services. That approach
will come back to bite them (hard) in the long run.

If you outsource, stick to your guns and hire only proven
service providers who have true subject matter experts creating expert content
for them.

Final Macro View of 2012

With six hours to go in calendar year 2012, we’re
still on a fiscal cliff hanger and not likely to be rescued.

Here’s what are
best sources are telling us: The White House and Senate Republicans are closing
in on a budget compromise that would raise tax rates on couples making more
than $450,000 a year, increase taxes on VERY large inheritances and extend
unemployment benefits for a year. But, with the January 1 deadline fast approaching,
negotiators are hung up on how to postpone the $110 billion in spending cuts
due to take effect January 2.

Most likely it will be a series of stop gap measures. Government
will continue to find ways to spend money irresponsibly and legislators won’t
be fired or laid off if they fail to come up with a deal by the stroke of
midnight tonight. Regardless of income level, we’ll all be feeling a pinch in
one way or the other, but for most Americans (individuals and businesses) there
will be gradual pinches over months and even years, irritating yes, but not
painful bites that could knock us on our butts in one fell swoop.

So let’s tough it out and look at two very important positives that came out
late last week

2) Home prices increased for the fifth straight
month year over year The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller
national home price index
released late last week showed that prices increased 4.3 percent from October
2011, the largest year-over-year increase in two and a half years, when a home
buyer tax credit temporarily increased sales. October was the fifth straight
month of year-over-year gains, after nearly two years of declines.

Conclusion

We
can’t do much about the waste in Washington, but consumers and businesses have
been on a three-to-five year waste reduction program and the fruits of those
labors will slowly but surely pay off in the months and years ahead. Onward and
upward in 2013—the year of thought leadership (aka the Year of “I Told You So.”).